Saving the Appearances
There is an Ethical United States of America, and there are many positive things to be said later about this America, but let me here point out that the Moral United States of America is far more valuable to us, and is the reason that there is a United States of America at all. When you see people, at great cost to themselves, rescuing others, giving them hope, food, clothing, shelter, all without any compensation at all, you are seeing the power, not of ethics, nor the rule of law, not taxation nor government, not of education, nor certification, nor credentials, but the power, innate to all human beings, to be moral, to imagine themselves in the circumstances of others, feeling overwhelmed, feeling pain and sorrow, and grief, and hopelessness, and to be moved by these sympathetic and empathetic feelings to do all that they can to make that burden upon their own hearts lighter. These feelings can be ignored, but the coldness that replaces them is of small comfort; this coldness is a symptom of a disease that kills as surely as any other thing in human existence, and the fear of, or the actual presence of, this coldness is what drives even the best of human beings to give more than is within their mortal power to accomplish: they can even perish, having given their all. The truly successful, beautiful, and Aesthic ends of all our efforts, individually and collectively, are not the Objective Facts of mere Survival, but the priceless Subjective Truths of Morality. I do not know how or when the Ethics of social appearances came to replace the Morality of personal character; perhaps it has always been so, throughout the history of Man, and the Empires of Mankind, but I know that it seems to me that it has, and I feel relatively assured that something like this feeling is shared by many others. It is not hate itself that motivates many of the ills that we see around us, but a love of what little good is left in the world. What makes these acts seem to be hateful, is that these Moral Truths are being defended by people who have little or no concern for the beliefs, morality, and well-being of others. They have been abducted, surrounded, immersed, brainwashed, and infected with an Ethics that pretends that the more insightful, powerful, personal, and quiet Morality simply does not exist. And there is no cure for this disease anywhere in our formal disciplines or governance, but only in the hearts of individuals. It is Imperialism, Formalism, Legalism, Exclusion, and Credentialism that gives aid and comfort to Fanaticism. Perhaps the means to preventing crime and violence lies not in punishing willful and forbidden acts, but in not giving our fellow human beings reasons to assert the causes of their own empires, in desperate and violent conflict with those empires already established, doing whatever is willed by those who have the exclusive power to decide the policies of those empires. In contrast, Morality does not assert any empire, nor any formalized set of policies or rules; Morality, almost by definition, does not exclude anyone, nor does it exclude their values, beliefs, or innate strengths, nor weaknesses; Morality asks for no credentials, training, nor even public validation, nor approval, but only that others feel a greater confidence in the quality and surety of their lives, and that their own Morality does, indeed, matter. is more natural for the human heart to feel love rather than hatred1, and it requires all the force of any and every empire to twist and torture a human heart to feel hatred, and to turn away from the power, beauty, and wealth of love. All the Ethics of any such empire must continuously add to its already bloated policies, in order to pretend to a semblance of this Morality. All of these energies are expended, essentially wasted, on “saving the appearances”. Ethics has its place, but it must know its place. Ethics has never been the center of human well-being; it has always been Morality. Instead of making new enemies, new resolutions, new rules, new policies, and new laws, all without number, let us simply Mourn, Heed, and Encourage. 1 This is a paraphrase of a statement made by Nelson Mandela, a man whose life exemplified the power of the State to engender Hatred, and the power of the Individual to come to embrace Love nonetheless. "...I don't want to be a Emperor." Foo Fighters: The Pretender “His hope was to remind the World that Fairness, Justice and Freedom are more than words… they are AND MORAL perspectives.” Category:School of Hard Knocks Category:Philosophy for Everyone Category:Cybernesis